A Depression-era character resurrected for contemporary
downsizing and media discombobulation, Mitty is a natural fit
for Stiller, whose best performances, from “There’s Something
About Mary” to “Greenberg,” find heart and humor in the put-upon.

In screenwriter Steven Conrad’s most promising idea, Walter
is a photo researcher for Life magazine, his job doomed by the
transition to a leaner online venture -- and by the fact that
Walter has lost the photo slated for the final issue.

As much to impress his just-divorced co-worker Cheryl (a
subdued Kristen Wiig) as to skirt the ire of his smug, head-chopping new boss Ted (Adam Scott), the usually passive Walter
jets off to far-flung locales from the Himalayas to Iceland in
search of the picture’s globe-trotting photographer (Sean Penn).

Computer Gotham

Walter’s transition from fantasy hero to the real thing
proceeds in heavy-handed course. “Mitty” moves from CGI
daydreams of Manhattan as a video game, to CGI “reality” of
Walter traipsing over a volcano or plunging from a helicopter
into a freezing, sharky ocean.

“Mitty” makes too little use of Wiig, though it makes
room for a sweet performance by Shirley MacLaine (as Walter’s
mom) and for endless plugs pitching eHarmony and Papa John’s
Pizza.

In one fantasy scene that recalls the broader, sketch-style
comedy of “Tropic Thunder,” Stiller and Wiig spoof, for no
apparent reason, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” The
bit doesn’t jibe with anything else in “Walter Mitty,” and
it’s the funniest scene in the film.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” from Twentieth Century
Fox, had its world premiere Oct. 5 at the New York Film
Festival, and opens across the U.S. December 25. Rating: **1/2
(Evans)

Swaggering Capitalism

Jia Zhangke’s “A Touch of Sin” shows a China spiritually
disintegrating under capitalism, an increasingly violent country
where the rich swagger and the poor struggle for their little
portion of dignity -- a country, in other words, not all that
different from the U.S.

The protagonists of its four stories, all based on widely
reported incidents, resort to brutality in different ways and
for different reasons -- anger, profit, self-defense, self-hatred. (One is a suicide.)

In the first and most arresting of the sections, a miner
(Jiang Wu), tormented by his sense of fairness, gets pushed over
the brink by the ostentatious corruption of local officials and
the mealy-mouthed willingness of everyone but him to accept it.

It shows how obnoxious a real whistle-blower might be:
always obsessing about injustice, acting out his fury in futile,
damaging ways, hurling accusations at all the unhappy weaklings
around him who just want to get on with their lives.

The other sections involve an armed robbery, a rape and a
youth sinking into anomie. They’re absorbing (and gorgeously
shot), but the whole feels disparate and, for that reason, a
little unsatisfying.

“A Touch of Sin,” from Kino Lorber, is playing in New York
and opens in Los Angeles on Oct. 11. Rating: *** (Seligman)

‘The Dog’

In August 1972, John Wojtowicz botched a bank robbery that
was supposed to finance a sex change for his boyfriend (he
called him his wife) and took the bank employees hostage.
Excited crowds filled the Brooklyn street; three years later, Al Pacino played him in “Dog Day Afternoon.”

Wojtowicz, grown heavy and gray, is the subject of “The
Dog,” a charming, sad and completely fascinating film by
Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren. Wojtowicz is a motormouth who
calls himself a pervert owing to his obsession with sex. He
boasts three wives and 23 girlfriends, most of them presumably
male.

The movie covers his first homosexual experience in the
army; his involvement with the Gay Activists Alliance in New
York; and his falling hard, in 1971, for Ernest Aron, the young
transsexual who became his second wife ceremonially if not
legally.

According to Wojtowicz, despite the six years he served in
prison, he beat the system: “I won! Ernie got the sex change!”
Ernie also dumped him (and died of AIDS in 1987).

Wojtowicz has nothing like Pacino’s beauty -- somebody in
the movie calls him a troll -- but you can see how he talked
himself into so many beds. He may be crazy and full of himself,
but his magnetism is hypnotic, and it makes this modest
documentary a delight from start to finish.